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Review: Grumpy’s Private Reserve Bold XX Bar-B-Que Sauce

Award Winning BOLD XX: This is Grumpy’s original sauce. This sauce has a bit of a bite to it. Sweet up front with a spicy follow through. Bold XX is a well balanced sauce, that goes well with everything from French fries to shrimp and scallops.

Bold XX is the flagship Private Reserve BBQ Sauce from the crew at Grumpy’s, followed closely by the Not So Bold & Good Night Loving versions. Grumpy’s come highly recommended by several chileheads, including Lisa of the Three Hot Tamales who dragged me over to the Grumpy’s booth at Zest Fest. That shows you how good Grumpy’s BBQ is, when other vendors are dragging folks to the booth to sample it.

Actual BBQing is impossible here in NYC but I came up with the closest thing I could – burgers. Specifically, turkey burgers – which if you’ve ever had, you’ll know they need a lot of help in the seasoning department. I made my turkey burgers stuffed with jalapeno peppers, cayenne peppers & gorgonzola cheese but yet they still lacked in flavor. That’s where the Grumpy’s Bold XX came in.

I covered my entire burger in the sauce (as you can see) and still found myself taking samples (swigs) out of the bottle. With brown sugar as the #1 ingredient, the sweetness of the sauce hits you first but that’s quickly backed up by the bold flavor of hot sauce and smoke. I would not by any means classify this as a sweet BBQ sauce – it’s much more of an all-around performer.

The heat is minimal, but has more of a presence then in the Not So Bold sauce – it’s just enough to make you mouth water for more.

I can just imagine how good this sauce would taste on some BBQed chicken fresh off the grill. In fact, the thought is so compelling, I’m going to make sure I bring a jar of this to the next BBQ we go to – just to test it out. If you’ve got a grill of your own, do yourself & your friends a favor by picking up a few jars of Grumpy’s before you BBQ. Be sure to tell Grumpy that the HSB sent you!

11 Comments

Let me be the first to say this stuff is GREAT! We (THT) met Grumpy back in March at the Fiery Foods show and had the pleasure of seeing him again in Texas. Not only are ALL of his sauces great, he is a great guy as well. Go Grumpy!!!! Great review!

I ordered the Bold XX, I used it on my ribs (applied the last 45 min of 6 hrs of smoking) applied more with meal….. I now have a new favorite BBQ sauce… hands down. Excellent.. with a touch of kick at the end of each bite.